Is Ruto quietly abandoning the Hustler Fund for NYOTA?
By Aloys Michael, May 21, 2026When President William Ruto unveiled the Hustler Fund in late 2022, the message was clear and politically powerful.
This was supposed to be the financial engine of the bottom-up economic model that carried him to power.
For millions of Kenyans locked out of formal credit, the fund promised relief from predatory mobile lenders and the humiliation of borrowing from shysters at crippling interest rates.
The idea resonated because it spoke directly to the daily struggles of ordinary Kenyans. Boda boda riders, mama mbogas, kiosk owners and young hustlers finally heard a president talking their language.
The Hustler Fund was sold not just as a loan product, but as an economic liberation tool that would restore dignity to small-scale entrepreneurs and build a culture of saving and investment among low-income earners.
But less than four years later, reality tells a very different story. The latest budget estimates tabled in Parliament reveal that the National Treasury has allocated zero shillings to the Financial Inclusion Fund in the 2026/27 financial year.
Even more telling, projections show no further allocations in the years ahead. In politics, budgets are often more honest than speeches. And this budget appears to say one thing clearly: the Hustler Fund is quietly being pushed aside.
The decline has been gradual but unmistakable. The programme received Ksh20 billion during its launch year. That figure dropped to Ksh5 billion in 2023/24, then Ksh2 billion in 2024/25, before shrinking to only Ksh300 million in the current financial year ending in June. Now, there is nothing.
This is a remarkable retreat from a programme that once symbolised the soul of the Kenya Kwanza administration. President Ruto had pledged that the government would inject Ksh50 billion into the fund.
Yet by June 2025, official records showed only Ksh14.8 billion had been released. The gap between promise and reality is too large to ignore.
Treasury officials insist the government is not abandoning the fund. They explain that the Hustler Fund was always designed to become self-sustaining through loan repayments. In theory, that argument makes sense.
Revolving funds should ideally recycle repayments to support future borrowers without depending forever on taxpayers.
However, theory and reality are often very different in Kenya’s public finance environment. A revolving fund can only survive if repayment rates remain consistently strong and if the economy allows borrowers to grow their businesses enough to repay loans comfortably.
Yet many Kenyans who borrowed from the fund were already struggling with rising living costs, high fuel prices, increased taxation and shrinking disposable income.
The deeper question is whether the government has simply concluded that direct lending to millions of small borrowers is politically attractive but financially unsustainable.
Failing common mwananchi?
At the same time that the Hustler Fund is losing budgetary backing, another programme is quietly rising. The National Youth Opportunities Towards Advancement programme (NYOTA), is emerging as Treasury’s preferred vehicle for youth empowerment.
Unlike the Hustler Fund, Nyota is backed by the World Bank and focuses less on direct lending and more on skills development, job creation and enterprise support. That shift matters. It reflects a growing recognition within government that affordable loans alone cannot solve unemployment or poverty if the wider economy is not generating opportunities.
In many ways, NYOTA represents a more cautious and technocratic approach compared to the politically charged excitement that accompanied the Hustler Fund launch.
The government may now be prioritising programmes that attract donor confidence and minimise pressure on already strained public finances.
But politically, this transition carries risks for President Ruto.
The Hustler Fund was more than a policy. It was a symbol of the social contract he built with ordinary Kenyans. Quietly starving it of funding without openly acknowledging a change in direction could reinforce growing public perceptions that campaign promises are being revised under the pressure of economic realities.
NYOTA may ultimately prove to be a more sustainable and effective programme. Skills, training and enterprise support often deliver longer-term economic benefits than small digital loans.
But if the government is changing course, it owes Kenyans honesty about that shift.
Because when a flagship promise slowly disappears from the national budget, people notice, even when officials insist nothing has changed.